So quite a few folks were disappointed with the last poll on the Senate race came out ... on the Democratic side, that is. But Stuart Rothenberg joined the party of Democratic strategists panning the reliability of Rasmussen Reports #'s on individual races across the country:
The numbers in the Wisconsin survey that stuck out like a sore thumb were the favorable and unfavorable ratings of Republican Senate hopeful Dave Westlake. According to the survey, 33 percent of those polled had a favorable view of Westlake, while 31 percent had an unfavorable opinion of him.
What's so weird about that? Well, Westlake isn't exactly a public figure.
The self-described "entrepreneur and small businessman" went to West Point and earned an MBA from the University of Chicago, but as far as I can tell, he has no political experience and hasn't spent any money to get known. His year-end Federal Election Commission report showed that at the end of 2009 he had raised $33,000, spent $31,000 and had less than $3,000 in the bank.
In November, Public Policy Polling, a Democratic polling company, surveyed the Wisconsin Senate race and found Westlake's ID at 2 percent favorable/9 percent unfavorable. Could Westlake's name ID have skyrocketed from 11 percent to 64 percent from November to February? No, not without a statewide media blitz.
Now ... let's take a look at the Rasmussen Reports #'s for Charlie from that January poll that showed Vitter with a 23 point lead:
Melancon, a congressman since 2004, is viewed favorably by 39% and unfavorably by 46%.
So ... 84% of Louisianans know enough about Charlie, a Congressman from South Louisiana, to give their opinion of him to an automated poll? I find that hard to believe, considering that only 61% gave their opinion about Charlie to Research 2000 back in March 2009, with 39% having no opinion of him at all.
On Thursday, Rasmussen Reports came out with a poll on the Louisiana Senate race that is rather discouraging:
Candidate
Percentage (October 2009)
Sinning Senator (R)
57% (46%)
Charlie Melancon (D)
33% (36%)
One of the reasons for this surge of support for the Sinning Senator is that he has continually attacked Charlie by linking to him to President Obama. One such attack came recently in a fundraising appeal email:
Louisianans and Americans across the country are tightening their family budgets and reducing their spending. President Obama and the liberal friends of Charlie Melancon aren't following the example of families reducing spending, and are instead proposing to grow the government and spend more than at any time in American history.
While this greatly simplifies the President's budget, and fails to remind folks that the GOP-controlled Congress from 2001-2006 borrowed our way from a balanced budget inherited from Democratic President Bill Clinton to deficits as far as the eye can see, (and the Sinning Senator voted for every single budget), I find it curious that the Sinning Senator says one thing about the budget but does another when it comes time to vote on a bill that contains a simple idea that all Louisianans are currently doing - pay as you go.
That's right, Louisiana, while y'all are looking at your family budgets, and determining whether you can afford to get the car fixed, and if so, what you'll forego for the week or the month to be able to afford fixing the car, the Sinning Senator believes that the U.S. government should continue to borrow its way into debt. The proof is in this vote. And if you click on that link, you'll notice that the Sinning Senator was joined in voting NAY by every single one of his Republican colleagues in the Senate.
It is time for Charlie to fight the fight he's been given by the Sinning Senator, and that fight is defending the Democratic economic agenda. It is quite plain that the stimulus is actually working, and people are being put back to work: (hat tip to CenLamar)
It's time to expose the Sinning Senator for the liar that he is when it comes to, well, job creation, health care reform, the federal budget, the stimulus, and on and on by espousing an populist economic agenda, and showing that the Democratic economic agenda is producing positive results.
Since I didn't blog last week ... I wanted to give y'all a round-up of what happened that I found noteworthy in little blurbs:
The Sinning Senator once again has trouble telling the truth to the people of Louisiana, this time with respect to the safety standards on children's toys.
Senator Mary Landrieu appeared on MSNBC with Howard Dean, and morphed into a defender of the Senate's Health Care Bill:
Governor PBJ has been busy inviting supporters to join him for a duck hunt out in Cameron Parish during the first weekend of 2010. No news on whether former Vice President Dick "Buckshot" Cheney is scheduled to attend.
Ahhhh, dem Saints. To be honest, I'm fine with dem losing a game ... because a perfect season would lagniappe to what I really want to see - da Saints in Super Bowl XLIV!
Last week, Louisiana1976 highlighted an amendment put up by Senator Coburn of Oklahoma that will cut the $300 million that Senator Landrieu successfully inserted into the health care reform legislation prior to the vote to debate the bill in the Senate.
It all has to do with a tweaking of the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage, which determines how much money the federal government and the states have to put up for Medicaid coverage. The Louisiana FMAP has usually been around 67%, meaning that Louisiana usually puts up about 33% of the costs of Medicaid for a fiscal year. However, since the FMAP takes into account the average per capita income from five years to three years prior to the current fiscal year, that means for fiscal year 2011, it will take into account the per capita income of Louisiana between 2006-2008, the years that federal disaster assistance money flooded the state. Thus, the Louisiana FMAP drops from 67% to 63%, causing a $900 million hole in the state's budget this upcoming year.
Senator Landrieu fulfilled the #1 request of Governor PBJ by getting some funding to help close a $2.5 billion dollar hole in the state budget over the next five years.
While Governor PBJ has remained largely silent, the Sinning Senator has twittered his displeasure with "backroom deals" to get health care reform passed. Never mind that he's quite famous for some backroom dealings himself.
Ahhh, I digress.
Back to the FMAP funding issue ... according to The Town Talk, the Sinning Senator is:
"holding off judgment specifically on the Coburn amendment until it comes forward for an actual vote."
Hmmm ... what is there to decide, Sinning Senator? Either you'll vote nay to help out Louisiana, or you'll vote yea to appease your friend from Oklahoma, and you'll screw us all back home.
As Charlie Melancon said in a conference call on the Coburn amendment yesterday, and cut short in a tweet (tweet italicized):
"David Vitter needs to remember that he works for the people of Louisiana, not the Senator from Oklahoma. We're talking about $300 million to head off a state budget crisis and help families that need it most. It doesn't take a Harvard education to figure out that this is common sense and the right thing to do for Louisiana."
While most of us would expect that our Senators do the best thing for the people of this state, it doesn't always work that way with the Sinning Senator ... he looks out for himself before he looks out for the people of Louisiana.
Now the national political media has picked up on Secretary of State Jay Dardenne's floating of a potential primary challenge to the Sinning Senator:
"I've had a lot of people suggest that I do that. I'd have to raise some money. I may do that."
While I believe that such a challenge is the nightmare that keeps the Sinning Senator continually running to North Louisiana to project the image that he's hard at work up in Washington to take folks minds' off the fact that he wasn't on the straight and narrow back in the day, it's getting awfully late ... and if Dardenne is gonna run, he better start raising money quick. The longer he waits to get in, the less seriously I think his campaign will be taken.
There's a new website put up by the Louisiana Democratic Party's communications shop:
As usual, you can click on the picture itself, or click here to geaux check it out. I gotta say that I LOVE it. Absolutely LOVE it, particularly since it will make my job oh, so much easier when it comes to highlighting the problems that the Sinning Senator has with telling the truth.
Not only does he not rule it out, he pledges to keep listening to folks. Well, I've been hearing that he's been in northern Louisiana quite frequently over the past few months, and taking the time to meet with Republican elected officials. Rumors are flying that Mr. Dardenne is speaking with those elected officials about putting a campaign team together.
Moreover, the Sinning Senator's strategy appears to be to appeal to the hard-core right wing, or as noted pollster and political strategist Stanley Greenberg calls them in his book, The Two Americas: Our Current Political Deadlock and How to Break It, the F-You Boys and F-You Old Men, which is totally unnecessary unless the Sinning Senator anticipates a primary challenge, and is attempting to ward one off.
One such example of the Sinning Senator catering to the F-You Boys (& Old Men) is his ludicrous assertion that an obscure provision in the Cap & Trade Bill would give President Obama new powers of a dictator; an assertion that even right-wing bloggers @ Michele Malkin's Hot Air took issue with: (emphasis added)
That's not to say that this bill isn't dangerous, but it simply doesn't do what Vitter claims. Nowhere in either bill does the term "climate emergency" appear, which Vitter claims is the lever through which the President will claim dictatorial powers. We need to focus on the real problems of the bill, chief among them that it will kill jobs to solve a problem that doesn't exist, rather than generate false hysteria to answer false hysteria.
Now, Democratic operatives tell me that the Sinning Senator's polling has remained remarkably consistent all year despite a climate that has been absolutely vicious for Democrats in Louisiana. That same polling shows that Vitter's Republican support is weak, and it is weakest up in overwhelmingly Baptist North Louisiana.
What does this mean? It means that if Jay Dardenne were to throw his hat in the ring for the Republican nomination, it'd be a battle royale. And those same Democratic operatives are scared of running against Dardenne - he's a stable, well-regarded elected official with a slim record to run against.
Will Mr. Dardenne run? That's the nightmare that keeps the Sinning Senator running to North Louisiana every chance he gets.
I've had 60 town halls this year, 190 since elected. Melancon hasn't had one in 160 days, see countdown @ http://snipurl.com/z3i34
First of all, the Sinning Senator is laughably harkening back to the days when we all wondered what the definition of "is" is. This time, however, he has me wondering what the definition of town hall is.
You can see right on Congressman Melancon's website that he held a "town hall" on October 14th, and another on September 2nd.
In addition, you don't necessarily need to waste taxpayer resources by having town halls masquerading as campaign events if you go to where the people are, and talk to them while you are there. Two such examples are Congressman Melancon spending Veteran's Day at two locations in his Congressional District:
15th Annual Mulberry Elementary Veterans Day Celebration
When: 10:00 a.m. CST
Where: Houma Terrebonne Civic Center
Veterans Day Event and Picnic Lunch
When: 12:00 p.m. CST
Where: Veterans Memorial Park in Gonzales, Louisiana
In addition to the Sinning Senator's lie about Charlie not holding a town hall, I would seriously question whether what the Sinning Senator is holding is a town hall at all, considering that the questions are screened by his staff. For instance, this is how he treated a woman at a town hall who dared to ask him (respectfully) about his vote on an amendment that would victims of rape and discrimination deserve their day in court:
Late this morning, the Sinning Senator pushed the old, tired GOP tactic of telling Americans what to be afraid of back to the forefront again with this tweet on Twitter:
Obama bringing GITMO terrorists to US for trial despite our bi-partisan votes to keep detainees out of US.
Apparently, the Sinning Senator thinks that the folks at Gitmo do not deserve a very American idea called due process, which is embedded in the 5th Amendment:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Maybe we can send the Sinning Senator to a secure prison, and throw the key away for 6 years. I wonder what his response to that will be.
The Sinning Senator has long been misleading Louisianans on his support for veterans. In person, he will be gracious, and thank veterans for their service. The following anecdote from the Louisiana Conservative is telling:
I was completely sold on his sincerity when Veterans approached him one by one after the meeting and he thanked them for his service.
In person, the Sinning Senator can be quite charming when he wants to be. But for a Senator, the key to knowing what he believes lies in how he votes. And veteran's groups have been watching quite closely, and I have posted the highlights below:
Disabled Veterans of America consistently gave Vitter failing grades, including three "zeroes". Of the six rankings given to Vitter between 1999 and 2006, only one was above 42 percent. Vitter's ranking of 40 in 2006 was the lowest in the entire Louisiana delegation.
The Retired Enlisted Association gave Vitter two failing grades of 35 percent and 33 percent in 2006 and 2004, respectively, which are the most recently rankings available.
American Veterans, an organization that traces its roots back to 1944, gave Vitter a ranking of 50 percent in 2003 (most recent ranking available).
The American Legion gave Vitter a ranking of 40 in 2003 (most recent ranking available). By contrast, Congressman Rodney Alexander received a ranking of 80 from the organization.
Is this the kind of representation that our veterans deserve in Washington? Or can we do better?
UPDATE: An interested reader forwarded me a link to a report that the Sinning Senator, along with his fellow GOPers on the Senate Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development decided it was not worth their time to attend a hearing entitled, Ending Veterans' Homelessness. Such compassion for our veterans, no?
So the Sinning Senator, afraid to piss off the voting bloc he's banking his entire re-election campaign on, dispatches his spokesman to say the following about Tangipahoa Parish Justice of the Peace Keith Bardwell:
"First, Sen. Vitter thinks that all judges should follow the law as written and not make it up as they go along. Second, it would be amazing for anyone to do a story based on this fringe, left-wing political hack's blog - he's been handcuffed and detained in the past over his guerrilla tactics."
Notice how he can't say anything about Mr. Bardwell's actions? He's sidestepping the issue, afraid to piss off that voting bloc. As for the second point of his spokesman, isn't it amazing that the Opelousas Daily World, the Baton Rouge Advocate, and the Alexandria Town Talk, all conservative newspapers, deigned it important that the Sinning Senator comment on the issue by comdemning Mr. Bardwell's out of step vision for our society.
I'll have more about that voting bloc once I finish a book called The Two Americas by pollster Stanley Greenberg.
By now, y'all have heard about the Tangipahoa Justice of the Peace Keith Bardwell's refusal to marry an interracial couple. Here's what Governor Jindal had to say:
"This is a clear violation of constitutional rights and federal and state law. ... Disciplinary action should be taken immediately -- including the revoking of his license."
So Gov. PBJ wants him gone. Here's what Senator Mary Landrieu had to say, via a press release from her office:
"I am deeply disturbed by Justice Bardwell's practices and comments concerning interracial marriages. Not only does his decision directly contradict Supreme Court rulings, it is an example of the ugly bigotry that divided our country for too long. I call upon the Louisiana Judiciary Committee to use its authority to have Justice Bardwell dismissed from his position. He clearly has no intention of administering the law or upholding justice for interracial couples."
And, here, ladies and gentlemen of Louisiana, is what your Sinning Senator, the one up for re-election next fall had to say when questioned by Mike Stark, the blogger behind The Crooked Dope:
You don't think that's the case, Sinning Senator? What, that you're the senior most official from the State of Louisiana NOT TO COMMENT on this? If so, please see the quotes from Governor Jindal and Senator Landrieu above. Or perhaps you're not aware that Mr. Bardwell refused to marry an interracial couple? If so, please click here!
Then again, your silence ain't all that surprising to those who know you best ...
In 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by her co-workers while she was working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. She was detained in a shipping container for at least 24 hours without food, water, or a bed, and "warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job." (Jones was not an isolatedcase.) Jones was prevented from bringing charges in court against KBR because her employment contract stipulated that sexual assault allegations would only be heard in private arbitration.
Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) proposed an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill that would withhold defense contracts from companies like KBR "if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court." Speaking on the Senate floor yesterday, Franken said:
The constitution gives everybody the right to due process of law ... And today, defense contractors are using fine print in their contracts do deny women like Jamie Leigh Jones their day in court. ... The victims of rape and discrimination deserve their day in court [and] Congress plainly has the constitutional power to make that happen.
Why should the Sinning Senator have some 'splainin' to do?
It's not enough that he treated women as property in his past. It's not enough that he voted against the Ledbetter Equal Pay Bill, which mandates equal pay for equal work in the workplace. It's not enough that he voted against an amendment that would have expanded access to preventive health care services and education programs that help reduce the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and reduce unintended pregnancy. No ... he has to go and vote against this amendment which will give women their day in court against their attackers, and their defense contractor employers for letting it happen.
Louisiana Rule of Professional Conduct 8.4(b) provides it is professional misconduct for a lawyer to "commit a criminal act especially one that reflects adversely on the lawyer's honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as a lawyer in other respects." By his own admission, Sen. Vitter solicited for prostitution in the District of Columbia -- apparently on numerous occasions -- and the evidence strongly suggests he had a pattern of committing the same violations in Louisiana. Because soliciting prostitutes is a crime, Sen. Vitter clearly violated Rule 8.4(b).
While I am surprised it took CREW this long to figure out that the Sinning Senator is a member of the Louisiana Bar, I'm not surprised it's happening now, particularly in light of the Sinning Senator's vendetta against ACORN. As CREW's Executive Director states:
"Sen. Vitter's zeal to see ACORN criminally investigated for offering advice in setting up a prostitution ring reminded me he has yet to be held accountable for his own role in a prostitution ring. While ACORN's conduct is indefensible, so is Sen. Vitter's, and what is good for the goose is good for the gander."
Notwithstanding the reasons for this complaint, this is a serious charge, and should result in at least the Sinning Senator's suspension from the Louisiana Bar Association. Why do I make that claim? Because former President Clinton cut a deal that resulted in his being suspended from the Arkansas Bar for five years back in 2001 for lying to the special counsel investigating the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Soliciting a crime - prostitution - should merit a similar response from the Louisiana Bar Association.
If you want to help put pressure on the Louisiana Bar, y'all should click here to sign the petition to DEFUND VITTER, like he's pushing for the federal government to defund ACORN. Need more convincing? Watch below:
This Eighth Part of the Doing a Vitter series is going to focus on the Sinning Senator's penchant for breaking with the values of his purported faith - Christianity.
The Sinning Senator ran in 2004 on a family values platform, replete with commercials using his children as props. Then came the revelation that he was committed a "serious sin" in breaking the Seventh Commandment of his purported religious faith - Christianity:
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Unfortunately for the Sinning Senator, (as well as the rest of us), he just started breaking the Eighth or Ninth Commandment (depending on whether you're reading the Catholic Bible or the Catechism) to make up for not breaking the Seventh:
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You might be wondering what neighbor of the Sinning Senator's that I'm talking about ... it is ACORN, which the Sinning Senator has decided is the biggest threat to our Republic since the British invaded Washington D.C. all the way back in 1812. After all, no reputable a news agency as ABC News says of the Sinning Senator:
And then there's man who bills himself as "the Senate's most outspoken critic of ACORN ..."
Let's get the facts straight about ACORN: (hat tip to Anonymous Liberal):
First, let's take a step back and consider just what ACORN is. It is a non-profit organization whose mission is to empower and improve the lives of poor people. As with many other organizations, ACORN has a number of legally distinct parts, each of which has different sources of funding and engages in different kinds of activities (ACORN's conservative enemies routinely conflate these various parts to imply that ACORN is using federal money for improper political purposes). Since its founding the 70s, ACORN and its employees and volunteers have fought successfully to, among other things, increase minimum wages across the country, increase the quality of public education in poor areas, and protect people from predatory lending practices. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, ACORN helped rebuild thousands of homes and assisted victims in relocating and finding housing outside of New Orleans. The ACORN activity that has drawn the most conservative ire is its voter registration efforts which, consistent with ACORN's mission, are primarily aimed at low-income voters (who tend to vote Democratic).
See a pattern yet? ACORN helped low income folks in New Orleans, the Democratic stronghold of Louisiana, resettle and/or move back home. Plus, they took it upon themselves to register thousands of working poor Americans in the run-ups to the 2004, 2006 and 2008 elections, and common sense dictates that they'd likely do so again in New Orleans for the 2010 elections - which include the city government elections in the spring, as well as the Sinning Senator's re-election campaign in the fall.
Gee ... no wonder the Sinning Senator wants to destroy ACORN. After all, empowering low income Americans that might vote Democratic next year just doesn't fit in the Sinning Senator's Get Out The Vote operation.
Now, you may be wondering where the Sinning Senator has been bearing false witness. It's here:
"After months of beating the drum and continued news reports of criminal investigations, the president and his administration are finally starting to distance themselves from ACORN. The Census dropping ACORN as a partner is a good, common sense move. Now we must go one step further and support my simple and direct amendment, which declares that no federal funds should go ACORN."
Criminal investigations? Pray tell, what criminal investigations, as ACORN has yet to be charged with a single thing. Perhaps the right wing echo chamber, prodded on by the Sinning Senator, has been bearing false witness against ACORN because they don't like the idea of empowering low-income Americans?
This video from Media Matters seems to show that Fox News is simply throwing the kitchen sink against ACORN, hoping to make something stick ...
Unfortunately ... the ACORN organizer was messing with them:
"They were not believable", said Ms. Kaelke of the two actors. "Somewhat entertaining, but they weren't even good actors. I didn't know what to make of them. They were clearly playing with me. I decided to shock them as much as they were shocking me. Like Stephen Colbert does - saying the most outrageous things with a straightface." While her sense of humor might not be funny to many people, the fact is that she spun false scenario afterfalse scenario and the videographer ate them up.
For example, in response to the set-up by the filmmakers in which they say they are trying get the young woman away from her abusive pimp, she responds that she was abused by her former husband as well (true) and that she shot and killed him (false). He is very much alive and living near Barstow, CA.
Perhaps the Sinning Senator and his allies ought to check their facts prior to bearing false witness.
Text messaging services are now a staple of well-run political campaigns, and they will be coming to Louisiana for the 2010 elections, as evidenced by the post linked to above from The Hill's In the Know. As with all new technology, pols shouldn't do it on the cheap, lest they endure embarrassing gaffes:
Hence the snickers when a political operative recently received a text message from the campaign of Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), he of Deborah Jeane Palfrey fame. Vitter's camp went with a cheap service, and his message included an ad for ... what else? A dating service.
"Is it true love?" asks the ad. The accompanying link guides users to a website where they can find out if their "crush" feels the same way about them; we're told "David" and "Deborah" is a match.
The Sinning Senator just can't escape the snickers about his sexual peccadilloes.
This is what is wrong with the health insurance industry today ... the largest health insurer in the State of Louisiana, one that it can legitimately be said to have a near monopoly on private health insurance in Louisiana, (pdf alert) as they control 61% of the private health insurance market in this state, is featuring our Sinning Senator, an opponent of health care reform, to speak on health care reform.
Nor is it surprising that they have joined forces with the Sinning Senator, an acknowledged opponent of health care reform that would force Blue Cross Blue Shield to compete for consumers.
I must credit the Sinning Senator David Vitter for making me realize that this process of health care reform needs to be made simpler. Currently, I have been explaining what the stakeholders on pg. 428 (out over 1,000 pages) of the bill passed by the House committees means to a good friend of mine who has been, along with thousands of Louisianans scared into thinking that health care reform is bad, and the status quo is good, claiming that health care reform means that he'll be getting worse health care than he gets now. Anyhow, here's what the Sinning Senator said that opened my eyes:
"The problem with a 1,000-page bill is you can't have a brief synopsis," Vitter said of the bill before Congress. "You can't have it in plain English. There are so many hidden things tucked away."
Well, we already have four single-payer health insurance programs in this country - Tri-Care (for military members and their families), the VA (for veterans), Medicaid (for the poor), and Medicare (for our seniors). Well .... what about Medicare for all?
There's already a bill to make that happen ... H.R. 676. It's got 86 co-sponsors in the House. What I can't understand is why the Sinning Senator isn't in favor of it ... it's radically simple, and all of 30 pages. (pdf alert)
That should cure the Sinning Senator's problem with the complexity of a 1,000 page bill. And don't tell me Medicare is terrible. If it was so terrible, why are the insurance companies and their allies scaring seniors with the lie that their Medicare will be taken away from them?
Well, the Louisiana Democratic Party sent the Sinning Senator a message via the ethics complaint they filed with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics, as TPM's Brian Beutler so memorably put it:
If you want to bash your political rivals at your rigged town halls, don't do it on the public dime.
Indeed, the Sinning Senator has allegedly spent taxpayer money in conducting the town halls across the state on health care reform. That's all good and fine ... but for him to take the time to highlight the differences between himself and Charlie Melancon is technically a violation of 31 U.S.C. ยง 1301(a), which states:
Appropriations shall be applied only to the objects for which the appropriations were made except as otherwise provided by law.
This means that any appropriated funds must be used for the intended purpose - i.e. to hold a town hall meeting as part of his official duties as a United States Senator. However, it seems apparent that the Sinning Senator has been using the town hall meetings for campaign purposes by the following actions that have been taken:
